A strong autumn breeze blew as I walked along the leaves, crunching them underneath my feet. I didn’t know how to feel. I was only four months home since my last deployment and I was already packing and preparing goodbyes for the next long, hard journey. As I kept walking, I pondered more about my life and wondered if this next deployment would leave a deeper mental scar than the last. I had seen things one can never unsee, but there were still great times I would live over again. I walked in the door to see a woman chasing two little children and a barking dog, and couldn’t help but just stand there. I wasn’t here while the kids were growing up, and I sure as hell knew nothing about raising children, even if they did belong to me. I asked my wife if there was something I could do to help but all I got was a muffled yell across the room about helping get the kids to bed.

“Jackson! Sarah! It’s time for bed, go get your pajamas on and brush your teeth,” I told them. Jackson walked up to me, looked straight into my eyes and said “Why should I listen to you, you’re never home anyways.” And he turned his back to me and walked away. My own eight year old child wouldn’t take instruction from me because he thought I didn’t want to be around. My heart was aching. It was aching for my kids who barely got to know their father, for my wife who was just as much as a hero as any other army wife, and for myself, would this ever change?
A kiss and a tight hug, it was the last thing I got from my wife while saying goodbyes at the airport. I heard loud planes flying above my head, and reality struck. It was really time to leave again. I gave my last hugs and kisses to my kids and grabbed my things. As I started to walk away, I turned around and noticed a tear slowly fall down my wife’s cheek. The emotions running through me were stronger than I had felt on previous deployments. I don’t know what made this one so much different, but that statement Jackson said kept running through my head and I didn’t know how to feel about that. I wanted to just turn around and help raise my family, but I also loved feeling the satisfaction of saving lives and making a difference to protect my country. The lonely plane ride was the worst part. Countless hours of replaying things in my head, but having nothing real to do while in the most uncomfortable position with the most obnoxious people.
After being in central Iraq for weeks with no Internet, no air conditioning, and nothing but beans and rice, the whole crew started to get restless. We waited a little longer for the Army to give us some kind of task. Anything to keep us from drowning in our boredom. We decided to take things into our own hands by finding something to keep us busy. After trading favors with other companies and branches stationed near our base, we managed to get the right amount of supplies and extra luxuries to help the crew out a bit. We could now call our families, eat real food, and sleep in comfortable living spaces with a reasonable amount of cool air. Although these things all helped with the tough living conditions, it didn’t help with the extreme amounts of boredom while we waited around to get called for missions.
Days of this slowly passed by until I got a call from our commander, who tasked us to pick up the combat stress team in Balad and bring them back to Baqubah. The combat stress team is a small psychological health unit deployed to ensure that soldiers are properly dealing with their stress. We all knew that some soldiers’ did not handle their stress very well from their first tour. On the way to Balad, SSG Randy Scott suggested that maybe… we could stress out the combat stress team.
*****
The aircraft landed at Balad, and Randy ran in to brief the passengers. “FOB Warhorse is under attack, you are now entering a combat zone! When we land, run 10 feet outside the rotor disc, drop to the ground, take up a defensive position behind your rucksack, and wait for instructions from the brigade surgeon. Once you are out of the aircraft, we are getting out of there, it is too hot for aircraft to stick around for you guys!”
The passengers came out to the helicopter, and the crew had weapons hanging out the doors ready for defense. The stress team’s faces filled with fear, and it was obvious that we were not the kind of ride they were expecting. Anyone that knows about aircraft knows that this is ridiculous to do with our specific helicopter, but it was a show for the passengers. I took off and climbed to 300 feet flying leisurely and relaxed until we crossed the wires half way to FOB Warhorse. Once we cleared the wires, I dropped the collective and rolled into a right hand bank falling towards the earth rapidly. We settled at 50 feet above the ground and we were now flying at 150 knots yanking and banking as if we were taking hostile fire. I drop down into the river bank still flying aggressively at 20 feet above the water.
I yelled to SSG Scott “We are two minutes out!” over the intercom. Randy held up to fingers and yelled over the engine noise to the Combat Stress Team Captain "Two minutes out, lock and load! Lock and load!" The captain turns around holding up two fingers and yells "Two minutes out, lock and load! Lock and load!"  The passengers scramble loading a magazine and preparing to enter a combat zone for the first time.
A minute later I told Randy that we were one minute out, and he relayed the message to the passengers with one finger in the air. "One minute out" and signaled them to take off their seatbelts. The captain once again relays the message, and the soldiers are amped up on adrenaline ready to jump out of the aircraft.
I popped up out of the river right at the boundary of FOB Warhorse, and the doors flew open. I pushed the nose up on the air for a rapid deceleration, and performed a perfect air assault into the medivac pad. The pad is surrounded by 12 foot high T-walls. The Brigade surgeon is leaning up against his clean black suburban drinking his coffee watching the most aggressive landing ever performed on the base.  His jaw dropped in shock as he spilled his coffee straight into his lap.
We hit the ground and the soldiers dropped out and took cover behind their backpacks. I called out to Randy on the intercom, "3, 2, 1." Randy calls back "clear!" As I pulled in collective, the wheels come off the ground, and I turned around to see a larger, dark colored woman pass out the right side of my peripheral vision. It is too late to abort the take off, but she is going to feel the blast of our rotor wash. "Stupid wench" I murmured to myself. She did not feel like getting down behind her ruck sack. Just then, the wash hit her, knocked her off her feet, and she went rolling end over tea kettle. The crew laughed hysterically.
  We make a hard right hand turn to see the passengers starting to stand up from behind their rucksacks with a confused look on their faces. The Brigade Surgeon is still watching in shock as we perform the maximum performance landing and re-position across the field for hot re-fuel. The crew laughed the whole time. "We stressed out the combat stress team." We landed and shut down and went to the chow hall for dinner. The Combat Stress Team later stopped by our table to say, "You got us good".
*****
Although there were moments for us to have our laughs, working in the Army wasn’t an easy task. Day after day, we fought for men’s lives in places where we could have lost our own. A few calm days passed of typical paperwork and living the life as a soldier in hot, heavy clothing in 120 degree weather, the team got a call for a serious mission that would change my life, and many others’, forever.
I was told by my commander that there had been an “incident” nearby involving a few casualties , and although they were our men, he banned the crew from going on this mission due to the storm, and he didn’t think it would be worth risking lives to save a few. It was night, and the weather conditions were horrid. As the father and husband in me started thinking, I wondered about these men down across the way, and although I was prohibited to leave, I thought about the possibility to save a few men’s lives, even if it meant risking my own. In this case, I decided the best thing to do would be to take my chances and apologize later. I gathered a crew of men who were willing to take on this mission with me and we left the second we could get out of the base.
Taking off from FOB Warhorse under night vision goggles, zero illumination, and minimal visibility, we approach the first set of wires. Running into wires in this unfamiliar area is my biggest concern followed by inadvertently entering the clouds. This is my second tour, now an Instructor Pilot, my call sign is MedHawk 24. I radio MedHawk 17 as we cross the first set of wires and 250’ our crossing altitude. CW2 Tony Potter, MedHawk 17, is also a 2nd tour veteran and the Pilot in Command of our second ship. He took off exactly 1 min after us for proper safety and spacing.
My map indicates four sets of wires lie between our forward operating base and the injured patients. We received a call that 5 American soldiers were trapped and in danger of drowning in an armored personnel carrier that rolled off the soft shoulder into a ravine. I have seen it happen too many times, an inexperienced kid driving with toilet paper tubes on his face gets too close to the edge and rolls the thing over. I was thankful for the extra time and effort that the Army spent on me for night vision goggle training.
As I scanned trying to find the second set of wires, I noticed my adrenalin pumping. I am intent on getting to the patients quickly while remembering that I am responsible for the 4 lives in aircraft as well. We are flying 80 knots which seems very slow in a Blackhawk, but there is nothing worse than out flying your visibility. My crew chief spots the second set of wires coming in from the right rear and we cross at 300 feet once again radioing our sister ship. My co-pilot, WO1 Nick Burkett has already proven himself to be an amazing part of our team. He is just a kid and either demonstrates the calm of a seasoned professional or fails to realize how dangerous this mission has become.
As I search for the 3rd set of wires, I start to think about a similar mission back home at Fort Lewis. I was just an over confident kid flying with CW3 Steve Nelson. We were on first up and had just gotten a few hours of sleep when the mission came in around 1:00am. Steve was nervous about the weather, but I assured him that we fly missions in this kind of weather all the time. The patient was a veteran that had a heart condition and needed to be transported to Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis. We had to fly down the Columbia River Gorge to get to Hood River located to the west of Portland, Oregon. When we finally arrived at the Hood River fire station, the patient was loaded from the ambulance into the aircraft. He was stable and could have ridden in the ambulance to the hospital. This was the first pointless mission where I risked my life, and it made an impression on me. Who was that idiotic doctor who called in an urgent medevac, risking all our lives, just for a stable patient?
We were able to fly alongside the wires until we found an opening in the clouds large enough to safely cross the wires. Nick called out the third set of wires, and my attention was immediately back in the c***pit, and I hoped that this mission was worth the risk. I radioed Tony with the crossing altitude and he acknowledged. I was glad to know that I was not alone out here, but I did not really have time to deal with those emotions. Fear had to be sealed in a tight box to do this job, and my focus was now on the patients and the landing zone.
As we crossed the 4th set of wires, we radioed to the ground unit on the secure frequency to let them know that we were inbound. We were flying so slowly, I am sure they heard us a mile away. The ground unit placed VS-17 landing panels out for us, but they were totally useless. I would have preferred infra-red chemlights, but I appreciated the effort none the less.
The guys on the ground could not believe that we made it in such bad weather. Our medics ran to the armored personnel carrier and had to cut the guys out of the submerged vehicle. Our sister ship landed with additional medical support. Under the night vision goggles, I could see five lifeless bodies dragged out of the wreckage and once again asked myself if this mission was worth risking my life for.
*****
That day, those medics were able to resuscitate three of the five soldiers, and they were loaded on my aircraft. We took off enroute to the large Combat Support Hospital at Balad Air Base while Tony transported the bodies back to FOB Warhorse. Once again, we were dodging clouds flying at 80 knots. The medics working on the patients told me that these guys will not survive unless we speed up. Faced with a life and death situation, I called Balad tower and asked them to wake up approach control for an emergency instrument approach. I had recently completed the instructor pilot course and felt confident in my IFR skills. Balad approach control assigned us a transponder code and found us on radar. Once they had us set up for an emergency P.A.R. (Precision approach radar) approach, we climbed up to 2,000’ and sped up to 150 knots.
I had not thought about Nick’s IFR experience, and he kept letting his pitch attitude get beyond my comfort zone. His instrument scan was too slow, and we kept pitching up and down like a porpoise trading airspeed for altitude and vice versa. New Blackhawk pilots always fight with the trim until they learn to let the aircraft fly itself. I told him to slow down and get the aircraft straight and level. These things get out of control quickly, and I was determined to keep the greasy side down. About the time I thought about taking the controls, we broke out and cancelled our IFR clearance but made it just in time to save the lives of these rescued men.
I got my wings taken away for disobeying orders and risking the lives of nay men, and I had to explain my actions to a review board, however, I thought so deep and hard about what I did, and I would never take it back. Hell, I would do it again if I had to, because three soldiers survived and went home to their families because of the courage and risk our team took to get them picked up in the right timing.
*****
I don’t know what kind of man I would be now if I never experienced all that I did overseas. I wouldn’t be so humble, and I sure wouldn’t be much of a great father or husband. Oh the things you learn when you are sleeping in 137 degree weather, and crawling on your stomach to dodge bullets, is how much you appreciate your wife for putting up with you for all of those years. You learn how to be selfless in the military because of how much you need to put others before you. We all have someone back home waiting for our return. I learned about real heroes and real men and women who fight tirelessly to save the lives of others and to save our country. I was one of the lucky ones, they told me. I didn’t suffer from PTSD or anything extreme of that sort, but I know for a fact, I would never want anyone to go through something that intense. It was tough, and at times, it was hell. But I wouldn’t hesitate one bit if I had to do it all over again.